


almost dead inside

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Episode: s04e15 Self Control, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 02:52:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10207739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: This isn’t Fitz’s blood.





	

This isn’t Fitz’s blood. It’s an artificial solution meant to look, feel, and smell like real blood so that the LMDs can more easily pass for human.

That doesn’t stop Jemma’s hands shaking as it dries on her skin or her stomach turning from the smell of it.

She forces herself to look at the body again, to see the glint of metal beneath the torn skin. It isn’t Fitz. It’s a machine. A very convincing copy. But it is only that.

Its head turns, those eyes she knows so well fix on her and a hand slides across the concrete floor, reaching for her. “Jemma.”

A sob escapes her (it may not be Fitz, but that’s _his_ voice pleading with her) and is lost beneath the sound of a gunshot. It echoes in her already aching head, whiting out her vision and sending her sideways to the floor.

The first thing she sees when the pain fades to a manageable ache is Fitz, lifeless, with a bullet hole in his forehead. She cries out again before remembering where she is and who that isn’t.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay.” Strong hands turn her away from the sight. She has a brief flash of a beard and dark eyes before she’s being cradled against a chest. “It’s okay, he won’t hurt you again.”

Ward.

Her heart stops, but her shaking doesn’t. Her bloody hands curl desperately in the front of his shirt and her breathing grows erratic. She should be as frightened of him as she is of the thing across the floor. She should question how he came to be here when he’s meant to be rotting away in Vault D. But he’s here and he’s solid and he’s warm where she’s cold and so shaken she’s sure to come apart at the seams any moment.

“It’s not,” she hiccups as his hand slides soothingly up and down her back. “It’s not-”

“Not Fitz,” he finishes for her. “I know.”

That she can’t allow to pass unquestioned. The LMD is a near-perfect replica; _she_ didn’t even know until it turned on her. She pushes back, searching his face for signs she knows won’t be there. “How?”

“They tried to replace me too.” His hands are still cupping her arms, moving up and down in the same rhythm they moved over her back a moment ago. It’s not something he’s ever done with her before. Not that he’s had much opportunity lately. And not that she has much room to question his behavior when she’s still clutching his shirt. Which is, now that she has the sense to notice it, a red flannel, far from the dull grey scrubs he’s been wearing day in and day out the last three years.

“And you escaped?” Surely if Radcliffe programmed the LMDs to replace Ward as well, they would have considered him a greater threat than her and taken precautions.

Her hands loosen and she tries - and fails - to put more space between them. This isn’t Ward. It can’t be. He’s another of them, trying to trick her. His comforting her is just another trick, like Fitz kissing her while he was mapping her brain so she could be _replaced_ by some _thing_. The real Ward may have become somewhat docile in his cage in recent months - answering whatever questions are put to him without a fight, calmly facing Talbot’s threats that he be transferred into military custody, and even comforting her in the wake of Will’s death - but he would never stay. After three years? He would surely run if he had half a chance.

“Let me go,” she says as tears leak from her eyes once more. “Please. Please, let me go.”

His grip on her tightens. “Simmons, I’m me. I swear.”

“Fitz said-”

“That isn’t Fitz!” He says it so loudly, so angrily she’s shocked into stillness. He swallows. His hands loosen, but he doesn’t release her. “You know me, okay?”

She shakes her head helplessly. She knows Fitz too. But she had no idea…

He sighs and it seems for a moment they’re trapped at an impasse. She has no way of knowing for certain this is truly Ward, no way of knowing she can trust him, and no idea how to move forward no matter who he is. Then his hand closes around hers and he lifts the knife she’s still holding between them.

“These things don’t have real flesh and blood, right? No organs, no bones?”

“Right,” she says, trying to ignore the sight of the blood - hers and Fitz’s both - clinging to the blade.

“So-” he lets her go and begins rolling up the sleeve of his shirt- “take a look.”

She stares dumbly at him. “You’re not serious.” The plan which seemed so reasonable when she was terrified and reeling from the revelation that she might just be the only one of her friends not replaced by a replica seems insane now, especially after the way it went last time ‘round.

He only stares back, eyes wide and earnest. And, if she’s completely honest, more than a little manic. Whether or not this is the real Ward, the mind behind those eyes has spent the last three years in a cell. Years in which he’s osculated between rage and shame and self-pity. Years spent conniving and yelling and pleading for freedom. Years when he harmed himself, whether in a reckless a play for freedom or … a different sort of play for freedom.

“No,” she says, staring at the line he cut along his wrist years ago. She sewed him up. And while she hated him then, cursed him with every breath she took while stitching him back together, she doesn’t hate him now. She won’t undo her own work.

He catches her hand again, aims the knife away from the radial artery. Memories collide in her mind. Ward limp and lifeless on the floor of Vault D, blood pouring from his arm. Fitz clutching his own wrist, feigning pain as a ploy to attack her. She isn’t sure which way this will end, but she doesn’t want either.

“No,” she says again, this time putting her free hand against his chest.

“I know you won’t hurt me,” he says. “Just do it so we can get out of here.”

Her fingers curl around the collar of his shirt, pull it open to expose his chest. He’s so pale after so long underground. He might as well be a corpse. “Not there,” she says and twists her hand free of his to set the knife over his collarbone. “Here.”

His bones will protect anything vital. She hopes. She also hopes there’s something vital to be protected.

He undoes the first few buttons to give her better access. There’s no hesitation, no fear at all. She once made a promise to his face that she would kill him if he ever spoke to Fitz again (didn’t matter to her that Fitz was the one free to come and go or that a man with no books or entertainment might not be mentally capable of rebuffing company) and he doesn’t think twice about letting her cut into him.

She isn’t sure whether that’s an insult or a compliment and doesn’t waste time wondering. He’s right, they do need to be gone from here before one of the others arrives.

“Where did you get the change of clothes?” she asks while wiping the knife on her leg - the one that isn’t bandaged, and she chooses also not to think about the fake Fitz patching her up after injuring her. It’s not much in the way of sanitation, but needs must.

“Locker room,” he says, voice going tight as she presses the knife into his skin. “Some guy named Davis?”

She imagines Davis - assuming Davis _is_ Davis right now - finding his locker’s been emptied while he was blowing off steam in the training yard. “He won’t be pleased.”

“Looks better on me anyway.” There’s a note of something in his tone, something she hasn’t heard in a long while. He knows it too if his suddenly withdrawn expression is any indication.

She forces her lips into the shape of a smile. “I’ve missed that.”

He meets her eyes in question.

“You,” she says. “I’ve missed you.” It’s the first time she’s allowed herself to say it. She thought it. In the weeks after the uprising, while the world was in chaos, she missed him as protector. When she was undercover in HYDRA, she missed his steadying support. In her time on Maveth, she missed his resourcefulness. But in the past months, she’s grown to miss him most of all. His sense of humor and self-assuredness. It was a rare sight even when she spent weeks not-so-secretly paying him visits. He was a good grief counselor, an excellent sounding board, but not much of a person.

“I’ve been right here,” he says softly.

She drops her eyes to the bloody mess she’s making of his chest. She’ll have to find a suture kit to sew him up so that he doesn’t have yet another ugly scar. But he’s right, he has been right here. She can see bone.

“You’re real,” she sighs. She should find something to bandage his chest with, but her relief is so keen it saps all her strength. Her head falls to his uninjured shoulder. She breathes in the warmth and smell of a real human being, takes comfort in two solid arms wrapped around her. There’s blood on her hands and her head still feels as though it’s about to break in two, but she hasn’t felt this safe in years.

His hand slides up and down her back again. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m real. And we need to move.” But he doesn’t, and neither does she, not for a long time.

 


End file.
